ZONE Central 3
Madison (Saturday, April 5)
8:00am - 1:00pm
Hammonasset Beach State Park
FULL TEAM - THANK YOU ! (as of 3/26/14)
Location : 1288 Boston Post Road, Madison, Connecticut


Zone West 2
West Haven (SUNDAY, April 6)
8:00am - 1:00pm
West Haven High School
6 more Operators needed
Contact:
Glen N1HAW ([email protected])
Location : 1 Circle St, West Haven, Connecticut


Zone Central 1
Cheshire (SUNDAY, April 6)
7:30am - 12:30pm
2 more Radio Operators needed
Contact:
Douglas WA1SFH ([email protected])

MS Walks : A Review

Three great MS Walks were supported this past weekend in Madison, Cheshire and West Haven. I had the opportunity to observe operations in Madison on Saturday, and run Net Control in Cheshire on Sunday.

The difference in courses provided a great example of the variations in topography that we encounter in Connecticut and how it affects Line Of Sight during VHF communications.

I wish to extend a BIG Thank YOU to those who volunteered and came to help provide communications to these events.

Here in an unsolicited email I received from the event manager for Cheshire.

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Douglas,
I can’t thank you enough. What a great team!
I am looking forward to next year and hope to have a better solution to the Dattco bus. ... I will send pictures when I receive them via email.

Best to you and your crew!

Michelle
National MS Society

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It is always nice to be recognized for providing service, yet each MS Walk showed some area(s) for improvement.
Without referencing any specific MS Walk site, here is the laundry list:

Equipment
- Radio/Antennas not adequate to the challenge
- Equipment failures
- Insufficient familiarity with how to manually program the radio.
- Forgetting to bring (and/or use) "double can" Headphones

Operating
- Excessive chatter on the frequency
- Unrequested information announced at will.
- Inadvertent change of frequency (use the Lock feature)

Organizational
- Missing Pre-Event Team Briefing Meeting
- Poorly created course maps
- Shadow losing their assigned person
- Shadow not staying close enough to their assigned person.
- An "ARES Team Photographer" was not designated.
- Missing Post Event Team Debriefing Meeting.

The GOOD NEWS
- These are EASY TO FIX.

The BETTER NEWS:
- We have more PSE's coming up.

The BEST NEWS
- We CAN IMPROVE what we do and how we do it.

Please listen to this talk from Dayton 2013
The Do's and Don'ts of Public Service Events
www.therainreport.com/rainreport_archive...report-3-22-2014.mp3